Deep in the Arctic, at 78 degrees north latitude, lies one of the most remote outposts of global communication: the Svalbard Satellite Station, or SvalSat. Situated in the barren expanse of Spitzbergen, a futuristic ensemble of more than 160 antennas rises from the plateau of Platåberget, maintaining continuous contact with satellites orbiting the Earth. No other location on the planet lies this far north, enabling the reception of polar-orbiting satellites during every single pass – up to 14 times a day. This exceptional geographic position makes SvalSat an indispensable hub for Earth observation. Satellites in polar orbits deliver detailed data on glacier movements, vegetation change, sea ice dynamics, and atmospheric processes – measurements that are of vital importance in the context of climate change. SvalSat operates in an environment marked by months of darkness each year, temperatures below –30 °C, snowstorms, and isolation. The architecture of the facility is striking: most antennas are housed in spherical white radomes – weatherproof protective shells. These structures shield the sensitive technology from the Arctic’s extreme conditions, such as snow, ice, humidity, and gale-force winds, without impairing signal transmission.

The work “tracking station II” was created during an Arctic expedition undertaken by the artist to Svalbard. At the center of the composition are the geodesic radomes – dome structures that draw on the ideas of Buckminster Fuller. Conceived as an architectural utopia, they function here as enclosures for highly sensitive satellite technology. In the image, they are stripped of their purely functional role and instead appear as sculptural bodies, inscribed into the frozen landscape with an almost otherworldly presence. The strict layering of the domes guides the viewer’s gaze deep into the pictorial space, creating a sense of rhythm, repetition, and spatial depth – three principles echoed in the operational logic of the station itself. The color palette is deliberately reduced: cold greys, fractured whites, and metallic blues – a spectrum that conveys both technological austerity and environmental isolation. The dramatic sky intensifies the tension between natural terrain and artificial structure. The image addresses the invisible: the concealed technology within the domes, the satellites orbiting silently above, the continuous flow of data – all remain hidden from the human eye. A strangely inconspicuous door in one of the radomes functions as a semantic disruption – a possible threshold between visible surface and hidden depth. It marks a (sealed) passage into a world where the infrastructure of global data transmission lies buried and unseen.